Sweet lilting vocals and mesmerizingly beautiful and ultimately cool arrangements: These all punctuate the music of Japanese Breakfast. At times quirky but always undeniably real, Jubilee is both intimate and grand. We had the opportunity to sit down with Zauner at an event hosted by Fender as they were launching their new Player Plus Meteora guitar. A Fender fan since her guitar beginnings, she had trouble getting her mom to buy into the instrument. “I started begging for a guitar probably when I was 14 or 15, but my mom didn’t get me one until I was 16,” she says. “Like most Asian kids, I was forced into playing the piano at 5 years old. But the guitar was so much cooler and all the guys at school that I admired played guitar. I wanted to join them. I learned my first three chords and I was really off to the races. I just loved songwriting and the guitar really became this vehicle for songwriting. It was just my instrument.” Originally from the west coast of Oregon, Zauner was inspired by Indy rock bands like Modest Mouse and Deathcab for Cutie. Rooted in personal experience and expanded to appeal to a wide swath of listeners, Japanese Breakfast’s past two albums were written while Zauner’s mother was sick and ultimately died from cancer. That experience deeply influenced her music, and also later inspired an article in the New Yorker that led to her best-selling book, Crying in H Mart. Her mom’s death struck her hard, but now, with the release of Jubilee and new successes, she feels her mother ushering her forward. “I feel my mother in the way that I behave and react to certain things instinctively. Sometimes I can hear her coming out of me in ways that I scold my husband or in how I react to something emotional on television. My mom never got to see me come into any sort of artistic success. And so it felt so strangely serendipitous that I became very creatively successful only after she passed away. In some ways, it always felt like she was looking out for me. Since she passed, it feels like she’s almost responsible for all the success,” Zauner shares. With Jubilee, Zauner has turned the corner, celebrating life with verve. Coming now from a place of light, Japanese Breakfast’s explorations have struck a chord with listeners worldwide. “It feels very surreal. It’s really wonderful actually. It’s a lot of validation to be nominated for a Grammy. It’s just one of those funny things that I get to have now. And it stays with you forever. It’s an undeniable accomplishment that anyone can acknowledge. So, yeah, it was a huge surprise and massive honor.” Find out more about Michelle Zauner and Japanese Breakfast here. Listen to the entire interview with Michelle Zauner here: Next, do people who are tone-deaf hear music differently?
